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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24103945">the luscious field</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieandsouffle/pseuds/pieandsouffle'>pieandsouffle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the watcher's crown is worn by a queen [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Archivist Sasha James, Carnivorous Plants, Description of blood, Episode 26 AU, Gen, Horror, Questioning Reality, Spiders, Statement Format, The Distortion, The Spiral, Transformation, a distortion au, implied jonmartin, mazes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:14:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,185</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24103945</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieandsouffle/pseuds/pieandsouffle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Statement of Timothy Stoker, regarding an incident in Eccleston Square Gardens and subsequent encounters with a paranormal being.</p><p>Statement begins.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the watcher's crown is worn by a queen [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690378</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>129</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the luscious field</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Content warning for blood, spiders, being trapped, mazes, carnivorous plants, worms, trypophobia, questioning reality.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong> <span class="small">TIM STOKER</span> </strong>
</p><p>It all really started after Jon burst into the Archives after being wormed.</p><p>Yeah, I know it’s not a great way to put it, but I mean. Got to get your humour from somewhere, right? Especially since this place isn’t at all a riot. The most fun I’ve got out of the job is talking to you guys; like with that ‘does Elias fuck?’ conversation we had just after your promotion came through and –</p><p>Wait, can I swear in these?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <span class="small">SASHA JAMES, THE ARCHIVIST</span> </strong>
</p><p>It’s your statement. You can do what you like, I s’pose.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <span class="small">TIM STOKER</span> </strong>
</p><p>Okay, that’s cool then. So I – wait. Again. Does Elias listen to these?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <span class="small">SASHA JAMES, THE ARCHIVIST</span> </strong>
</p><p>I’m … not sure? He does come down sometimes and take statements to listen to in his office, but I don’t think he listens to all of them.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <span class="small">TIM STOKER</span> </strong>
</p><p>So there’s a chance he won’t ever hear about the uhhh interesting conversation I mentioned just before?</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <span class="small">SASHA JAMES, THE ARCHIVIST</span> </strong>
</p><p>A small chance.</p><p>A very small one. He listened to Jon’s statement when he heard that he’d given one …</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <span class="small">TIM STOKER</span> </strong>
</p><p>Ah, fuck.</p><p>Well, if you <em>are </em>listening to this Mr Big Boss Man Sir, please know that I want you to know that I have a lot of … uhh … respect. For you. And what you do. And all that. Of course.</p><p>Continuing on with my statement! The reason I’m here!</p><p>I was being more cautious now that Jon had given a statement. Like, I know that I rib Jon a lot – the guy is just <em>so </em>easy to rile up – but it <em>was </em>my ribbing that led him to find Prentiss, who then went after him, and then the spider thing … well, everyone here knows the story. I guess I felt pretty guilty about it. He was freaked out about the whole thing – god, somehow the spiderwebs <em>more so </em>than worm-woman, thought he’d pass out when he mentioned that – and I felt especially bad about it because it was <em>Jon</em>. He’s spent the last four years taking every opportunity to inform us that all these statements were absolute rubbish, and then suddenly Mr Agent Scully comes bursting in with an undoubtedly paranormal statement. If Ryan from upstairs came in with a story about being besieged by worms I’d be inclined to doubt it, simply because Ryan has told me on multiple occasions that he’s been abducted by aliens and probed.</p><p>But again, this is Jon we’re talking about, and I thought it best to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Not sure if you’ve noticed the dozens of worms squiggling on the pavement outside the foyer – think I can see some smushed against your skirt right now – no, don’t check, I was joking – but I reckon Jon is <em>verrrry</em> glad to be staying with Martin right now. Probably for more than one reason. Right?</p><p>More seriously, after what happened yesterday I completely fucking understand why Jon hates spiders. I think I hate them too now.</p><p>Anyway. I was being cautious. Well, not <em>cautious </em>exactly, as everyone knows I’m not really the kind of guy who errs on the side of caution, but I was keeping an eye out for anything weird. Apart from stomping on the worms outside the Institute, I was on the lookout for other things too. Spiders. Other fun little creepy crawlies. Cyclopes. You know, the usual.</p><p>Naturally, I saw something when I <em>wasn’t </em>looking for anything. I didn’t see a cyclops or a spider the size of a bus, but I sure did see – and <em>speak to </em>– something yesterday.</p><p>I was on my lunchbreak, having a wander through the Eccleston Square Gardens. Now, everyone at the Institute has visited Eccleston Square, and if they haven’t they at least know of its existence. Maybe they haven’t gone inside the gardens because technically you can only go in if you’re a resident of Eccleston, but … I don’t care. I don’t have a key, I don’t know anyone with a key, and I’m sure as hell not paying to go in. I just jump the fence when no one’s looking and walk around like I’m allowed to be there. It always works. And if it doesn’t, I give whoever is giving me the evil eye an incredibly charming smile, and that usually gets them off my back. I go there most days for a bit of fresh air without risk of being flattened by a car, so this was all routine for me.</p><p>I normally just walk around a circular path that loop around half the park, on the side away from the tennis courts, and yesterday was no exception. So I just ambled along, drinking soup and having a look at the flowers.</p><p>People always seem surprised when I tell them I like flowers. What, does my outrageous hotness act as a substitute for personality? Don’t reply to that. I have depths, I contain multitudes. I have interests, and while I can’t name lots of flowers I really enjoy looking at them. If I spot any I like but aren’t familiar with, I often ask a gardener what they are, or do my own research. It’s just a fun, harmless way to spend the time.</p><p>I’m no expert, so there were only a few in the park that day that I recognised. Some plots of carnations – I love the home-made, tissue paper look they have – and some irises dotting the place.</p><p>There was also a carefully maintained plot of spider orchids.</p><p>I don’t – huh. I’ve never really … had much of an opinion on spider orchids, apart from ‘well, they’re kind of ugly, but whatever’. Do you know what spider orchids are like? Well. There’s a central petal where you’d expect to see the … uh, I think it’s called a stigma? The stamen, maybe? The centre – oh, I don’t know. Think about the yellow part of a daisy. That’s where the central petal is. It sort of rolls over, coils under in a loop, exposing tiny little teeth protruding from it like a grid of feelers. There’s a big petal beneath that, which stretches out towards the ground in a broad, short polygon, and then there are the other petals. And they – well, it’s not called a spider orchid because it looks like a dandelion, is it? The other petals distend from the stem in an array of long, thin legs that wave about beneath and above that shorter petal, and the effect really is like a huge, colourful spider twitching its many legs, testing the threads of its web.</p><p>Honestly, thinking about them makes me feel sick.</p><p>They’re not exactly small flowers, but something about the fragility of those long-limbed petals does prevent them catching my eye; even the brightly coloured ones. I find them actually difficult to see if I’m not looking for them. My gaze slips right over them to focus on more rounded, familiar-looking flowers.</p><p>But after Jon told us about the spider at his flat – and honestly, he should have just told us all in the breakroom instead of bringing it up later, get the conversation out of the way – I was sort of … ruminating on spiders. So on my third lap of the gardens, I decided to stop and take a closer look at them. They sat neatly in their plot, surrounded by delicate Queen Anne’s Lace.</p><p>This specific strain was mostly white, but the centre of each and much of the petals were speckled with dark red flecks. My first thought was that they looked like the flowers had been spattered with droplets of now-dried blood, but then another, objectively nastier image came to mind: holes honeycombed into flesh, eaten by hungry creatures burrowing deeper and … well. This was supposed to be my lunchbreak where I could <em>stop </em>thinking about work for an hour, but now all I could think of was Jane Prentiss with her putrid parasites and Jon’s nervous face, so I decided I was done with the park today.</p><p>I had half an hour left, and thought I’d head into Oxfam on the way back to the Institute and maybe find a tacky mug or two to add to the breakroom collection. I downed the rest of my soup and started to make my way to the end of the circuit, where the path would connect to a second, tangential path that bisected the park and would lead me past a small greenhouse, and then on to the street. I was about in the middle of the circuit when I decided this, so I still had a bit of a ways to go and would have to pass those carnations again. I walked on, and after a few minutes I realised that they weren’t there.</p><p>My first thought was that that I had simply missed the plot. I had definitely been walking long enough that I was almost onto the straight path, but looking ahead I could see only the gravel path curving towards the right, the view beyond blocked by an unfamiliar tree. A gnarled old thing with lots of greyish, twisted branches and roots that fought with themselves a bit before digging into the soil.</p><p>I didn’t like the look of it.</p><p>It didn’t scare me – for god’s sake, it was just an ugly tree – but goosepimples erupted across my back and my stomach felt sort of … cold and heavy, as though I was anticipating something.</p><p>I looked behind me, but there was no one there. I hurried over to the bend so I could leave the park and cast a suspicious eye at the tree as I did so, but when I turned the corner:</p><p>I was on the same section of path.</p><p>It was completely identical in every way. The same sick-looking tree stood at the bend before me, branches held closely to its trunk, the same spider orchids swaying in the breeze. I stared at them. My stomach felt heavier, and my head felt light.</p><p>This was not right at all. I’d been to this garden dozens of times. I knew my way around. And the gardeners here were way too proud to fill the garden with the same strain of frankly ugly orchid, and even uglier trees. I turned around, mystified, to see that the single gravel path I had been walking on was actually two.</p><p>The path I was following converged with another, a convergence that I had somehow missed. It curled towards the right, while the path I had taken bowed towards the left. The view was obstructed by two identical old trees, as dark and sick as the one behind me.</p><p>I hesitated, before taking the right fork.</p><p>Now, maybe that was stupid. Maybe I should have just stayed put, but – what would that have achieved? If nothing was going on and I was just being paranoid, then I would have stood in the middle of the path hours like an idiot until someone came found me. If something paranormal <em>was </em>going on – and three identical, unfamiliar paths in an improbably maze did strike me as highly suspicious – there was, again, nothing to gain by staying put. All that would guarantee was that I wouldn’t get into more or less trouble, and I sure wouldn’t find my way out. Apart from the directions of the paths there was no discernible difference between them.</p><p>I understood very, very clearly that no matter which path I took – even if I walked back the way I came – I would not get back to where I came from. These paths came and led to the same place.</p><p>I was very sure of that.</p><p>The right fork led, once again, to the same scene, but fractionally different somehow. There was the gravel path. There were the knee-high orchids waving happily in their plot. But my eyes burned to take it all in. I caught myself staring at the branches, counting their number and cataloguing their patterns, but for all intents and purposes they looked exactly like the ones behind me.</p><p>There wasn’t much else to do but keep walking. Sometimes I took the left forks and sometimes the right, and sometimes I turned on my heel and strode down the new ones that grew behind me. The scenery was all the same. I tried to avoid looking at it, instead fixing my gaze to where the buildings loomed over Eccleston Square, but I somehow wasn’t surprised to see that the buildings were all gone. I think I suspected they were gone long before I looked up to confirm. There were only more pale-barked trees with dark, dark clouds of leaves crawling upwards to cover the sky.</p><p>I walked for what felt like an hour. I don’t know how long it was exactly, but however long it was, that period of consistent <em>nothingness </em>came to an abrupt end when the colours changed.</p><p>The same scene lay before me. Orchids. Trees. The perpetually growing path.</p><p>But it wasn’t quite the same. The gravel wasn’t grey anymore. The plants were no longer the same. The best way I can think to describe it is that someone turned up the saturation. The greyish pebbles of the path were less dull, tinged yellow like sand rather than stone. I couldn’t stop looking at it.</p><p>I picked up one of the pebbles and held it up to my eyes. It was angular, nothing like the smoothness you expect when you hear the word <em>pebble</em>. Its distinct sides flashed different colours as it rolled about in my palm, like an oily sheen on the road.</p><p>But the colours it reflected were not, and I repeat, <em>they were not colours we know. </em>They were impossible to describe. How can you even <em>try </em>to describe something when there are no words? This wasn’t Homer’s wine-dark sea, this was profoundly alien. Those colours slid through my eye like a hot needle through butter and impacted at the back of my skull. It felt like there was something living in my head, scraping and digging thick, sharp fingers into the space behind my eyes.</p><p>I dropped the pebble almost immediately to clutch at my head, but the second it left my palm the pain was gone.</p><p>I swayed a little. I could tell I hadn’t imagined the pain. Those colours still bounced around in my mind and I felt horribly dizzy, but it faded a little as I hauled in a couple of deep, stabilising breaths.  In a few second my head wasn’t spinning at all, but that heavy stone still sat uneasily in my stomach. I lifted my thermos to take a sip of soup to strengthen me, only remembering at the last second that I had finished it early. I cast a disappointed glance down into the empty thermos but –</p><p>It wasn’t empty.</p><p>And normally when I see that I have food left that I thought I already ate, I’m delighted. But this was <em>not </em>just that I had some left some soup. I actively remembered draining it, only minutes – hours? – ago. There was nothing left. But it was <em>completely full</em>. As in, it was full to the brim of steaming soup and if I moved at all it would spill down the sides and burn my hand. I had finished that soup. I could taste it in my mouth still.</p><p>I tipped all of it out into the orchids and watched the soil drink it down. Then I pulled myself together and kept walking, conscious that I was walking much faster than before.</p><p>The next turn revealed almost identical scenery, but again with the saturation turned up. I avoided looking at the path, but then all there was to focus on were dark, scraggly trees and more spider orchids. This plot of orchids was bigger. They leaked from the neat plot, tendrils feeling outwards. The other flowers around them – the white ones, just meant to fill the space – seemed greyer and smaller, huddled together in frightened bouquets. The orchids brightened, grew, fluoresced</p><p>Every glimpse of the flowers unnerved me more, so after a few more laps confirmed that the orchids were swelling out, herding the Queen Anne’s Lace into small huddles, I stopped looking at them. It was hard. The pain in my sinuses hadn’t gone, and as the saturation dialled up at every turn it turned sharper and throbbed more intensely with every heartbeat. The pulse of pain was so hot and <em>big </em>I almost thought that it was pushing my eyeballs out of their sockets.</p><p>I’m sure if that had happened I would still have noticed every increase in vibrancy. There was no point for it all to destroy my eyes. Whatever was causing this was wanted me to be a voyeur. It wanted to be observed.  </p><p>All there was to focus on now were the trees. They’d always been scraggly looking things with lots of branches, but there were more trees and more branches and more darkness as the canopies spread across and concealed the sky. In fact, the sky was completely hidden from me now. Above me hung a dark canopy of serpentine branches and a thick, cloying darkness.</p><p>It should have been impossible to see anything. The sunlight was completely extinguished, but the flowers and the path were as brightly illuminated as if there were stage lights focused on them. Even the blackness above was <em>bright. </em>It was a blackness so saturated, so incandescent that it hurt even worse than any of the swirling colours did.</p><p>The only thing left now were the branches. They remained grey. An unhealthy shade, glimmering slightly as though painted with a sheen of mucus. I ignored the darkness, stubbornly ignored the orchids as they spread like a plague, and stared at the branches.</p><p>Or branch, rather.</p><p>One incredibly long, twisting, winding branch interweaving with its own form, curling around what remained of the other trees in a light but purposeful embrace. I traced its path, finding multiple times that my gaze just flipped back to a point I thought of as the beginning. It wasn’t, of course. It was just a point where there was a little less shadow that I could use as a landmark. Where did the branch actually start? Where was the tree? Were there any trees at all?</p><p>I became aware I was walking at a speed that was only a little bit slower than a jog. I didn’t want to look at anything. I didn’t want to see anything. I just wanted to get out. So I stopped.</p><p>Counterproductive, of course, but I had a reason. I took out my contacts and stuffed them into the coin compartment of my wallet. If I – <em>when</em> I got out, I’d just find my glasses. They were somewhere in a drawer in the kitchen, where I put all the junk I might theoretically need. If survival here depended on me wearing my contacts, then, well, RIP me I guess.</p><p>I blinked a few times after I took them out. I expected the world to transform into something softer, where the edges of things weren’t so sharp as to cut my eyes. But taking them out was a mistake. I’d never been able to see so crisply and clearly without glasses before. I don’t think I’ll ever see as clearly again.</p><p>I could see with clear distinction the white petals of those fearful flowers being eagerly reached for by the orchids. They were dwindling in number now, the whiteness fading and greying, and the speckles of the orchids growing redder and redder and seeping into the rest of the petal. When I turned my head to look at them properly after – god knows how long it was; might have been minutes, might have been weeks – there weren’t any white flowers anymore. The shrivelled buds were blackened and dead, wrapped in a loving stranglehold by the tendrils of the orchids. They weren’t speckled anymore. They were all red. An improbable crimson. I stopped walking and stared down at them, lazily twisting in the soft wind.</p><p>Rain started to fall on them. It was as bloody as their petals. They lifted their tendrils eagerly, elated at this nourishing windfall that would strengthen their stems, grow them larger and stronger, let them reach further and higher. They raised their arms, reached towards the bright black canopy above, trying to grasp their new source of sustenance. This rain was rare, and they loved the source for it. One of the orchids dared to tenderly stroke the spring with a delicate limb, and I stumbled backwards as pins and needles erupted across my cheek at the contact.</p><p>I was standing shoulder deep in spider orchids. They surrounded me, clamoured for me. I brought up my arms to protect my face from their reaching arms, my sleeve soaking up the blood from my nose and eyes and looked frantically around for the path. I was standing shoulder deep in orchids. I brought up my arms to protect my face, my sleeve soaking up my nosebleed, and looked frantically around for the path. Was I still on it? Had the orchids encroached upon the only safety I had in this labyrinth? Had I walked blindly off into this bloody, luscious, living field?</p><p>Their shoots rotated in circles, patterns, fractals. It was every dizzying optical illusion at once, but none of it was an illusion. I felt more blood trickle warmly down my cheeks. I scrubbed at my eyes furiously with my sleeve. It came away unbearably red.</p><p>Was I going crazy?</p><p>I couldn’t see the path. All I could see were flowers, wheeling in writhing circles like cogs in the mechanism of an infinitely growing and shrinking spiral. I needed to get out. I stumbled forward blindly, cuff of my sleeve held against my nose to stop the blood from watering the things around me and making them grow even more. Arms pulled at my ankles and knees. I kicked viciously a few times and uprooted some of my pursuers. But the roots kept on going; each whitish string as thin as embroidery thread split into two and then four and then eight and then sixteen and on and on and on into enormous, tangled, weblike masses. I abandoned my fight and staggered onwards, blind and all-seeing both at once. My vision was a swirl of indescribable radiance. Gory spiders, no longer even pretending at the masquerade of flowers any more, clung to my legs and arms and back and –</p><p>And my foot landed on the path.</p><p>I felt and heard the crunch before I saw the path. My eyes were squeezed tightly shut. The weight of the spiders, or orchids, or whatever they actually were, was gone.</p><p>I opened my eyes, and I was at the end of the circuit. Before me lay the tangential path. There was a woman with a pram. There was a bird picking at some insects. There was a blonde patron peering into the greenhouse. It was all blurry, but unmistakeable.</p><p>I turned around, hardly daring to believe anything my eyes tried to see. There was a perfectly ordinary path, with a blue smear of perfectly ordinary irises to the side. I couldn’t see a single spider orchid. I was almost sorry for the absence. I wanted to make a fist around the stem of one. Haul it up by the roots and strip it to pieces as messily as possible; maybe throw the remains to the ground and trample on them.</p><p>Instead I shut my eyes and made myself take a few deep breaths. And then a man said, “Your nose is bleeding.”</p><p>I opened them again to see the figure who was over by the greenhouse turned towards me. A man, I thought initially.</p><p>Something pretending to be a person would be a more accurate description of that figure.</p><p>He looked perfectly normal, if blurry. Tall, broad, lots of long blonde hair. I couldn’t make out any facial features, but that was my own problem for removing my contacts. I took a step closer, meaning to say something jokey about being a spy and getting attacked by an enemy agent or something – half to reassure the man I hadn’t walked into a tree, half (the bigger half) to make myself feel better – but my gaze slipped off him and onto the greenhouse.</p><p>The reflection in the greenhouse was perfectly sharp. Rather than the peaceful, if slightly dull garden that truly surrounded it, the thick glass showed a saturated meadow overflowing with thin, crawling, bloody creatures, eagerly waving petal-like feelers as the squirmed this way and that. I watched them press up against the glass fervently, layer upon layer upon layer of flowers flattening themselves, squashing themselves and each other in their haste to reach out to me.</p><p>I blinked, and they were normal – if vibrant – if non-existent –  orchids once again.</p><p>My vision flashed red, and I turned my gaze towards the man.</p><p>His reflection was visible too. It was tall, much taller than the greenhouse was, but I could somehow see it in its entirety. Limbs too thin and bony, but without bone. There wasn’t any structure to those things that were probably supposed to be arms. They waved like the petals of the flowers in a gentle breeze.</p><p>The hands were the only thing with structure. The fingers had too many bones, too many joints. Every knob looked like the agonising arthritic joints of an elderly man, the digits tapered off into knife-like points and I knew, I knew that this thing was responsible for whatever the hell it was that just happened to me.</p><p>I walked up to it and said – how did I put it? Oh, yeah:</p><p>“What the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?”</p><p>Whatever it happened to be, it thought that this was the funniest thing anybody could have ever said. It laughed. It laughed for about ten seconds. Ten seconds of breathy quiet laughter that somehow … wasn’t.</p><p>You know how when you think of someone speaking, it’s at a specific volume? And then when you think of someone muttering or screaming, it’s still at that same volume? But like the actual sound of it has been turned up or down? That’s what this thing’s laugh was like. It was as loud as I’m speaking to you now, but it shouldn’t have been.</p><p>Then it told me it couldn’t describe itself. It was beyond description. The exact words were twisty, poetic. Something Martin would have written on a sticky note on his desk.</p><p>“How would a melody describe itself?”</p><p>The answer is: fuck if I know. I told it that if it wasn’t going to answer any of my questions, I was going to leave because I had work and I also needed to throw my thermos to the bottom of the ocean. I would have threatened to punch it in whatever its face was, but the memory of those sharp, strong fingers in the reflection of the greenhouse stayed my mouth and my fist. I was scared, sure, but my main emotion was absolute rage.</p><p>It laughed at that again and since I did have an idea of my odds against something like that I didn’t bother attacking it. I turned around and started walking away, but it somehow managed to get in front of me again, blocking my path. I could see the road beyond. I wanted to get out. I told it to get out of my way. It didn’t move, but it apologised – maybe for laughing at me? I don’t think it was apologising for what it put me through before – and told me that it wanted to help me.</p><p>I said that I had my friends to help me. It responded that it wanted to be my friend. As it said that, it reached out a hand that looked normal but was anything but, and took my hand. The one in the sleeve spotted with blood. It looked like a hand, but it didn’t feel anything like one. It was wet, and incredibly heavy, like the hand had been filled with the rest of the bones in its body. I tore my hand away and said that there was no way in hell I wanted to be the friend of some unnamed monster that tried to get me eaten by orchids. It laughed, but before I could even try walking away again it told me that I could call it Michael.</p><p>This thing did not look like a Michael.</p><p>I spat out a question. Asked if that was its real name.</p><p>“Maybe once,” it said. “But not really.”</p><p>I’m not interested in cryptic bullshit. So I let it go, and asked what it meant by ‘help’. It didn’t seem willing to let me go without talking more, so I was kind of doing it just to like, get it over and done with so I could be on my way and never go back to Eccleston Square. Michael grinned – a grin with at least twice as many teeth as there should have been.</p><p>It said it didn’t care whether my friends or I died. It only wanted to help as it disapproved of something called ‘the Flesh-Hive’.</p><p>“What the hell is that?” I asked. Michael laughed again (god I never wanted to punch someone so badly in my entire life), and said that one my ‘companions’ had come across the Flesh-Hive.</p><p>I thought about the spider orchids, with the speckling like blood … or holes eaten into dead flesh. “You mean Jane Prentiss?” I said.</p><p>Michael laughed. This was fucking it. I stormed past it. I would’ve shouldered it heavily too, but I didn’t trust it not to impale me on one of its horrible knife-like fingers. It didn’t follow me this time, just laughed and laughed. I was about to jump the gate when it said:</p><p>“Do you want to save your friends? Sasha James. Martin Blackwood. Jonathan Sims. If you wish to save them, I’ll be waiting at Hanwell Cemetery.”</p><p>I spun around, but when I looked back the pathway was vacant. I squashed a spider orchid by the gate – my god, the satisfaction I got from grinding that shitty little thing under my boot – and hopped the fence.</p><p>I really meant to just go back to the Institute and tell you what happened right then and there. But look: I was really shaken. And as I got further away from the park, the more worried I got. I seriously doubted that Michael had benevolent intentions. The thing had trapped me in a labyrinth of fractals and devouring plants. For god’s sake, it told me to my face that it didn’t care if I lied or died, and you can rest assured that I believed it! But it mentioned Jane Prentiss. Not by name, but it was clear. A woman made up of the worms slowly eating her is as close to a Flesh-Hive as you can get. Michael was as much a monster as she was.</p><p>But as they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend … and Prentiss had sought and terrified and tried to kill one of my friends, and then threatened another. I won’t let that slide. Michael could have lied and said it cared about me or any of you, but it didn't. I don’t see why it would have told the truth there, but then lied about Prentiss. So I went home. Cleaned myself up, changed into some clothes that weren’t soaked in blood, found my glasses and threw my thermos in the bin, and then got on the Tube for Ealing Broadway. I live further east, so it took a long while to go home and then get to the cemetery, and it was well past four when I eventually made it there.</p><p>Michael was waiting for me, leaning against the closed iron gates. I could see its true form in the pools of rainwater dotting the footpath. I stubbornly looked away from the water and stared at it expectantly.</p><p>“Well?” I said. It said nothing, but nodded and then turned away and began to walk in the direction of a row of houses. A close. A lot of the buildings were well-maintained; fresh paint, neat gardens, the like. At the end of the close, however, were the remnants of what looked to have been a pub once upon a time. The windows must have been shattered long ago, big corrugated metal sheets nailed up to stop people from getting in through them. There were some pretty exceptional dicks spray-painted onto the sheets.</p><p>Michael was over by the door, which was hanging loosely by only the lower hinge. It was ajar. Michael pushed inside.</p><p>I waited for a few seconds, staring after it … but clearly it wanted me to follow, so swearing irritably to myself I did just that.</p><p>I was glad it was still daylight outside, because it would’ve been nearly impossible to look around if it were dark. The ancient, worm-eaten bar was mostly intact, but the shelves behind were in splinters. There was a builder’s kit on the bar top, so clearly there had been some demolitions going on inside, but there was no sign of any workers.</p><p>I turned to Michael. “Oh, so the secret to beating worm-plosion woman is a screwdriver and hammer? Fantastic.” I would’ve continued, but then something that wasn’t me, and wasn’t Michael, made a series of wet, slapping noises from the far side of the pub.</p><p>I swore a bit more, and spun towards the source. There was a dark shape hunched on the ground, surrounded by shadow.</p><p>But the shadow was moving.</p><p>I stared at it. The shadow rolled towards me, away from the shape, and the light spilling in from outside lit up the shadow.</p><p>Silvery worms. The worms that we’ve all seen outside the Institute, and the ones that trapped Jon in his flat. They surged towards me in a wave, and I knew there were too many to stamp on.</p><p>I lunged for the builder’s kit, hoping to find that hammer I joked about, a lighter, a can of Raid, anything that might be of use in defending me against an army of flesh-eating worms, and in doing so knocked a small fire extinguisher off the bar.</p><p>It was a dusty old thing, clearly had been in this pub since it had actually had patrons, and it was deteriorating. It landed on its head, and the force of the crash wrenched the pin away and CO2 spewed out.</p><p>I was just thinking that dying of asphyxiation would probably make being eaten by worms less painful, but the first onslaught of worms got caught in the jet of gas and shuddered. They recoiled and writhed, shriveling like those flowers caught by the spider orchids in the park. Any that came in contact with the stream of carbon dioxide died in seconds. So I picked up the extinguisher and strode forward, nuking all those worms until I couldn’t see a single one of those little bastards alive.</p><p>I was standing over the person whose body they had come from. I had expected it to be Jane Prentiss, but this person was a man, and was extremely dead. His wallet was poking out of his jacket pocket, so I took it to see if there was anything to identify him. Most of the cards in there were absolutely covered in silvery gunk from the worms and the poor bastard’s own blood, but his driver’s license was readable. He was the man from that first statement; Timothy Hodge. We’d tried to find him for follow-up, but hadn’t been able to reach him. One guess as to why.</p><p>I made my way to the door, but Michael blocked me. I’d almost forgotten it was there. It stretched out its hand towards me. It wasn’t pretending to look human anymore, those fingers were long and jointed, and I was so surprised by that I didn’t realise what it was doing until it plunged those fingers into my thigh.</p><p>I screamed.</p><p>Obviously.</p><p>It pulled something out of my leg with a horrible wet <em>pop</em>. There was a silver worm skewered on the end of one finger. I hadn’t even noticed it burrowing in.</p><p>I think I swore my head off at Michael, but things did get a bit blurry after that. I vaguely remember thinking to call the police, but when I turned around Timothy Hodge’s body was gone, as was Michael, and what would they done? Seen a man with a gaping hole in his leg talking about a man filled with worms and a thing pretending to be a man with knife hands? Like they would’ve thought I wasn’t tripping the absolute biggest of balls; drugged out of my fucking mind.</p><p>So instead I called you, and got on the train again and … well. Here we are.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <span class="small">SASHA JAMES, THE ARCHIVIST</span> </strong>
</p><p>Here we are.</p><p>Statement ends.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Michael, seeing Tim in a garden with spider orchids: hey you know what would be <em>really</em> funny?</p><p>This was originally going to be pretty much the same as Sasha's original statement but it kind of ... got away from me. Also I've been to Britain like once, I don't know what the hell Eccleston gardens are like, I just thought Sasha implied that the Institute was in Victoria/Westminster</p><p>Don't know when I'll next write more! That kind of ... killed me haha, I'm so behind on uni work</p><p>Also I realised that the actual statements are all like. 2500 words? I'm going to die I put in too much effort</p></blockquote></div></div>
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